1. Field of the Invention
The subject matter of the present disclosure relates to energy management in a household and, more particularly, to improvements that facilitate data collection and communication among appliances in the household.
2. Description of Related Art
Home owners and other consumers of electrical power desire efficient energy management systems that can help reduce costs and peak demand to provide more efficient energy use. Various measures have been developed to address energy management goals. For example, energy efficient devices and appliances enable consumers to reduce energy consumption. In addition, utilities provide some consumers with direct control for certain electrical loads, such as heating or cooling devices, pool pumps, and so on, to allow utilities to control energy and power usage. Also, some utilities implement demand response programs for residential as well as industrial consumers in order to provide reduced peak demand requirements and to effectively manage energy consumption.
While these and other developments are available and enable consumers to manage power consumption, intelligent systems that monitor and manage consumption and effectively communicate information to the consumer are still being developed. In many systems, appliances exchange data with remote devices such as smart power meters. However, although these systems can successfully gather data, few systems can associate the data to individual appliances in the household. Since most households have numerous appliances that operate differently from one another, the inability to distinguish data of one appliance from another limits certain data analysis and related tasks.